Why It Pays to Embrace Inconvenience

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of convenience lately.

We’ve gotten to a point where life is designed around convenience. Whether that means ordering your groceries or send out your laundry, to outsourcing the ways you show up and manage your online business, to even the ways we write, it seems that anything now is immediately available to us at the touch of a button.

Yes, it makes our lives easier…but does it actually make our lives better?

Part of the appeal of convenience is that we can fall back on it when we are navigating the other, more complex aspects of our lives. In other words, when our cognitive load is maxed out, we reach for an easy fix:? food, shopping, entertainment in its various different forms. Billion-dollar businesses have been built on the idea of selling convenience to an overworked, overwhelmed population.

And yet, we’re not necessarily happier.

Entrepreneurs and leaders are no strangers to coming up with ways to solve problems and challenges. And that very capacity - our success even - is based on our ability to navigate inconvenience.

Another way to think about inconvenience is friction. What happens when the rubber hits the road. There has to be some friction in order for a car to move forward, otherwise it will swerve or hydroplane.

Some of us thrive on it. In fact, we go so far as to put ourselves in situations where we create friction, the idea being that, like diamonds, extreme pressure helps us to shine. Think of disaster or emergency responders, humanitarian aid workers, and hostage negotiators.?

Others of us may get that friction's part of our job description or roles, but we don't necessarily embrace it. In fact, we do the opposite. We punt it, we outsource it to someone else on our team, or we focus our time and energy on any task other than the one where the friction lies - whether it’s another human, technology, or something else.

In other words, we either indulge in friction or we avoid it.

Either of these strategies isn’t harmful per se. They’re natural responses, not just people leading organizations and teams. But when these approaches become repeated patterns, that’s an opportunity to pause and reflect.

You see, when something we do becomes automatic - essentially, a habit - we allow a part of our brains to shut off. These conditioned responses that are repeated over time are our way of mitigating or lessening risk. Whatever we did or said worked for us before, so we assume it will work for us again.

It’s like the mental equivalent of wearing a plain black t-shirt every day. By eliminating that one decision from the thousands of decisions that we make each day, we free up some more bandwidth to handle new challenges.?

But one of the under appreciated superpowers of successful entrepreneurs and leaders is discernment: the ability to be able to step back from being in the thick of things in order to observe what’s really going on when other people can’t (or won’t.) It’s how we’re able to keep focused on both our vision - and the impact we ultimately want to accomplish - and the realities of execution that will help us to get there.

Friction can generate creativity, but it can also stymie progress. The key is in discerning when your approach to friction is productive, and when it’s working against you.

From reflection to action

Can you notice when your behavior around friction start getting in your way??

If your default response is indulging - you relish friction - take a look at a situation in your current experience where friction is present - it can be at work or at home. How have you approached the people or situation directly involved? Are you causing friction for friction’s sake (like the Devil’s advocate), or are you making an effort to step closer into (if not into) the other person’s shoes?

If your default is to avoid friction, chances are friction follows you not because you welcome it, but precisely because you avoid it. (As a recovering conflict avoider myself, I would place myself here.) Friction is super inconvenient, yet it’s here for a reason. What is the annoying person, situation, or thing that you’re avoiding that keeps popping up like the heads in a game of whack-a-mole? And what is the message it’s trying to deliver to me?

Whether you’re an avoider or an indulger, you can ask yourself:

What have I done to address this friction??

What’s working for me (or what’s not)??

If I were to get really curious, what other/new strategies might I use to address it?

And now, for a moment of zen

I saw this drawing on the wall of a coffee shop the other day, and it entranced me. I stood in front of it for a good while just…delighting in its simple but effective message. Regardless of how you see yourself - or how others see you - we each have elements of both the left side and right side within us. I find that serenity - a state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled - comes from embracing the totality of who we are. From the black and white, more regimented side to the natural wildness and colors of our imagination.